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About Me

My real name is Noel Thorne but I also go by Sam Quixote on some sites (like this blog!) - I guess reading enough superhero comics will make you want an alter ego!

I currently live in Bristol, England, and work a day job separate from blogging/writing about comics. I've written numerous non-fiction pieces, mostly covering comics, for professional sites like What Culture!, Den of Geek UK, The Nudge Network, and The Sequart Organisation. You can find links to all of those articles on my about.me page.

I've been a comics fan since learning to read, starting with titles like Asterix, Tintin, and The Beano, graduating to 2000AD and Marvel/DC stuff in my teens, and "graphic novels" (ie. non-superhero comics) after finishing high school.

After giving up almost all comics from about the end of high school to my mid-20s, I rediscovered comics a few years after university and began reviewing them at Amazon. I realised that I enjoyed doing this and a couple of years into that I found out about Goodreads where I decided, apropos of nothing, to call myself Sam Quixote, who I think was a character in a short story I didn't write (and yes, it does intimate that I'm a dreamer of sorts/deluded - that is deliberate. It's a Don Quixote reference).

From there, I began this blog, which was initially called That'll Do, in Winter 2012. I started to regularly work on it in August/September 2013 and that leads me to where I am now, where I publish almost all of my writing here, sometimes daily, always weekly. From the start of 2013 onwards I started to write more seriously about comics and began to see my work published on the aforementioned sites.

I buy and review weekly comics, as well as graphic novels/trade paperbacks of every stripe, whenever and wherever I can. I do accept review requests but only from publishers/writers/artists I'm familiar with - that means no self-publishers, please! If you want to get in touch, my Twitter is @NoelThorne.

I do receive a lot of review copies but I don't mention this in my reviews, mostly because I forget to, but also because I'm ALWAYS honest in my reviews of books - sometimes to the publisher/author's anger! All of my opinions are 100% my own and are not influenced by anyone, anywhere. Ask me to review your book at your peril!

I read and review as a hobby and I enjoy doing both - hopefully you'll enjoy reading what I write too. Getting free stuff for that habit is reward enough and any money incidentally raised should go to help those less fortunate. It's what Superman would do. The mission is to leave the world a better place than you found it, right? I live comfortably on my salary and wouldn't expect a review blog to fund my lifestyle (I'm not that deluded... anymore!).

If you want to holla at me in the comments over whatever, go for it. Unless you're a spambot, you won't get deleted.

If there are any comics you want me to review, drop me a line on Twitter and I'll see what I can do. Otherwise, thanks for reading, enjoy the blog and read some damn comics!

3 comments:

Hey buddy, I came here all the way from Amazon, to tell you that your review spoilered a whole comic. You know, when you write a review, it'd be nice, if you would mark spoilers, like many other reasonable, reviewers are doing.